icken rat jumps on to man and bites him,
poor fellow gets plague--_bus_.[58]

[58] Finale, enough, the end.

"Didn't friends and family-members skeddaddle and bunk when they saw rat
after I told them all that! But I didn't care, I had had plague once,
and one cannot get it twice. Not one man in thousand recovers when he
has got it, but I did. Old uneducated fool maternal parent did lots of
thanks-givings and _poojah_ because gods specially attentive to me--but
I said 'Go to, old woman. It was written on forehead.'

"And when I returned to work, one day I had an idea--an idea of how to
punish Mr. Spensonly for propelling honoured parent head first out of
job, and idea for striking blow at British prestige. We had our office
in private bungalow in those days before new Secretariat was built, and
it was unhealthy bungalow in which no one would live because they died.

"Mr. Spensonly didn't care, and he had office on top floor, but bottom
floor was clerks' office who went away at night also. Now it was my
painful duty to go every morning up to his office-room and see that peon
had put fresh ink and everything ready and that the _hamal_ had dusted
properly. So it was not long before I was aware that all the drawers
were locked except the top right-hand drawer, and that was not used as
there was a biggish hole in the front of it where the edge was broken
away from the above, some miscreant having once forced it open with
tool.

"And verily it came to pass that one day, entering my humble abode-room,
I saw a plague-rat lying suffering from _in extremis_ and about to give
up ghost. But having had plague I did not trouble about the fleas that
would leave his body when it grew stiff and cold, in search of food.
Instead I let it lie there while my food was being prepared, and
regretted that it was not beneath the chair of some enemy of mine who
had not had plague, instead of beneath my own ... that of Mr. Spensonly
for example!...

"It was Saturday night. I returned to the office that evening, knowing
that Mr. Spensonly was out; and I went to his office-room with idle
excuse to the peon sitting in verandah--and in my pocket was poor old
rat kicking bucket fast.

"Who was to say _I_ put deceasing rat in the Sahib's table-drawer just
where he would come and sit all day--being in the habit of doing work on
Sunday the Christian holy day (being a man of no religion or caste)?
What do I know of rats and their properties when a